theglassheart | November 16, 2014

November 16, 2014 - Fukuoka to Hasetsu

The flights end up late, and it feels like he's chasing the ghost of a glimmer of light, one that he's already lost sight of, again, across an entire world of night. Leaving in the dark of Russia's night, and the windows never brighten. Even as hours and hours pass. He doesn't think he'll sleep, but he ends up sleeping in fits and starts anyway.

He didn't sleep well the night before, or the night before that. Which isn't all the unusual. Not during competition. But he wasn't forced by Victor to try to sleep during the middle of the day, and he didn't try to catch even a few hours sleep before his flight. He didn't touch the beds except to put his suitcase on it and fold things next to it.

Adding to those, his performance drained everything that was left in him.

He still dreamt shoddily. He dreamt he never made it.
He dreamed they recounted the numbers and he was too far under.
He dreamed and blurred the skate at Rostelecom with his one at his last Grand Prix Finale.

When he was luckiest, he dreamed of nothing. He simply slipped into that ebony, endless black. An embrace of pure exhaustion that didn't feel like sleep, and left him feeling more exhausted, more run over, but at least it didn't startle him awake in the middle of a panic, heart racing, eyes stinging, clutching the armrests, unable to catch his breath at first.

When he can't sleep, he stares unfocused out the window. Or at the barely there shape of his reflection in the double-paned glass of the window. Has the strangest, exhausted snippets of conversations. With Yakov, and Yurio, and Victor, so many times Victor. That start with words they've said, or might say, and ripple out from there.

Anxiety, and exhaustion, and too much waiting again, even more than before the skate. Unable to move from this spot. He looks at his phone more than he should, because he can't convince himself to let go of it most of the time, but he doesn't bother Victor. He's sleeping, he convinces himself several times. And when he might not be, with Maccachin, finally, he tells himself in others. Mostly he tells himself, he'll be there soon, closing the phone. Over and over. He can wait. He's made it this long.

There's so much time to wait, so much to say and he has no one else but himself to say it to. Which had always been true before, too, except now it isn't. Now he has so many things he needs to say to Victor. Victor, who still hasn't started lecturing him, and the longer that goes on, the more he starts to fret that is what is waiting for him in Fukuoka. Like skating to Victor at the side of the rink and it starting. Maybe when he walks in, then it'll start.

It makes his stomach tighten, even when he wants that if that's what it takes. If it'll put Victor back in front of him, he'll listen to the entire thing from beginning to end now. His stomach growls, after his exhausted anxiousness chases that tail for the next half hour, playing different tracks of that lecture, in the airport, with all of those people watching, and leaves him staring at the call button. Thinking about calling for another snack. Or another sealed meal, if he could.

(He's not going to eat the last Pirozh-katsu, long since cold, but wrapped up carefully in its brown paper bag, waiting in his backpack in front of his feet. It may have been given to him, a birthday present or congratulations, to be shared with Yurio, but that one, the very last one, isn't for him.)

What feels like an infinity of hours later still, the announcement overhead starting,
as the wifi finally picks up again, Yuri finally opens his phone, and starts typing,

We just landed.

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Yuri slams into him like a wave breaking against a lighthouse, but nothing shatters except for the tension in Victor's chest, and that goes all at once in a release that feels like the sudden bursting of a glass bubble, shards slicing into his heart and lungs and stomach and throat.

(Maybe when tears are held inside for this long they turn to glass and only cut instead of fall.)

Yuri's arms around his ribs, clenching around his back. Yuri's face buried in his chest and then his shoulder, glasses pushing into his collarbone and then the side of his neck. Yuri a blob of winter coat and backpack and a tired travel mess, and the only thing he can do is wrap his arms around Yuri's neck and tuck his face against the side of Yuri's head. Maccachin is wandering around their legs, and he can feel the nudge of a nose that's trying to remind him there's more than one beloved companion here, but he can't let go even for that, can't make a joke, can't find a way to lighten this thing that's expanding and expanding inside his chest until it feels big enough to threaten the whole airport. To crack the glass that was between them until only seconds ago. To race across China and the Siberian plains and all the way to Moscow to turn the long night there into glowing, brilliant day.

He feels like seaglass, transparent and fragile and rounded after being buffeted by waves and rocked by storms and polished by sand. He wants to be held tight in Yuri's palm and pressed to his heart. "Yuri..."

He barely knows what to say, now that he can say it to Yuri directly, instead of through a text or over the phone. He can't believe he ever took having Yuri right there beside him for so many months, never further than a hallway away. Had he thought he was miserable in St. Petersburg?

He no longer thinks he could survive being separated again, even for a minute.

But there are things he should say, as well as things he wants to, has to say. First and foremost.

(He thinks of Minako sitting with him at a booth, toying with her noodles and telling him to man up, you big Russian baby, and be the coach Yuri needs you to be.)

"I've been thinking about what I can do for you as your coach from now on."

It feels right in a way that cuts through skin and muscle and bone. The way exhaustion, right at the edge of breaking, after tracing figures all night for his head and then all day for his routines or jumps, feels right, on the razor of passing out. Victor’s chest against his chest, while Yuri’s heart races. Victor’s head tucked down against his head, while Yuri stays buried against him. Victor’s voice, saying his name, soft and drawn out, and Yuri’s eyes burn with that truth.

With every painful, somehow perfectly right, part of it.

He’d hugged almost all of his competitors, and one of them’s sister and none of them were this. This thing that makes him feel suddenly boneless and suddenly shored up all at once. That makes part of him tremble and another almost wants to whimper at his name, like that, the way only Victor says it. Like that. Like another syllable might break the dam Yuri’s tried to ignore, tried to keep from obliterating everything, for so long, and like not getting another syllable might actually kill him.

Victor goes on, while Yuri’s fingers don’t release the coat, but he has to open his eyes (has to see all the people both looking at them and very specifically not-looking-at-them) as Victor starts where Yuri knew he would. With yesterday. How is it that some part of him, even ready, even prepared, doesn’t want to talk about this. Not yet. Not this soon. Not in this second, where everything in him feels slices open, from the top of his head to the bottom of his toes.

When he has to let go of this abandon to both acknowledge he’s making an improper scene, going on touching Victor like this, and at the same time has to actually collect his thoughts enough to think at all. To admit the same. All of this time, all of the time while Victor was gone, he never stopped thinking about Victor and what they are doing. It’s soft, muddled, against the fabric of Victor’s familiar coat. “Me, too.”

Yuri has to steel himself, has to clench his eyes against the burning in them, swallowing down the rebellious slicing burn that swells in his chest, like he’s thrown himself into the boards, riled against overwhelming need to speak before Victor can. To not wait. To not just listen. To tell him first. Before he can say anything. Start his lecture. Tell Yuri he's changing anything because of all of this, Maccahin and Moscow.

Against the pain, against the swell of just enough to be absolutely too much in his head, in his chest, in the world, Yuri’s hands lift to Victor shoulders and Yuri pushes Victor back, with all his strength, instead of just stepping back himself.

Even as it all gets messy looking at Victor’s face.

(He didn’t make it but he did.

Maccachin is alive, here, snuffling at his shoes.

They were supposed to be skating tonight,
somewhere fairy lights hung from the sky,
not here, in an airport, having these words.

He wasn’t supposed to come home with nothing.
No medal, and a five-hundredth-of-a-point technicality.

But he’d found Victor. Out there, too.
Even when Victor was gone.

Inside him. On the ice.
Which had to mean something.

It did. It had to.)

“Be my coach until I retire.” It fires out of his mouth, even as some part of him feels the lightning strike of a devastatingly too near awareness in it. If this is only two days, he doesn’t know how he’ll ever make it at the end of these two months. Not anymore. Which drives the flare of even greater desperation and need that fuels the word he can’t stop. “Please!”

He needed Victor, needed every second and minute, until that happened.

Мне тебя не хватает,
it rings, again, shrill in his ears.

It feels right in a way even all the other "right" things in his life have never felt before. It's not like the perfect control of a jump he's practiced until it's muscle memory ingrained so deeply he could do it in his sleep, or the precise angle of his arm or drape of his fingers during a step sequence. It's not the weight of a gold medal against his chest, around his neck, or the flash and glitz of cameras. It's not even the simple rightness of movement, of dance and stretching and the forward momentum of a long run.

All of those thing feel right. All of those things are only him, enjoying the satisfaction of a body in excellent shape, reaping the benefits of decades of intensive training, accepting his natural place in the world. His accomplishments. The delight in simple motion.

This is the first time he's extended that sensation from I to us.

It's right in a way nothing else is, because he's never felt he was missing half of himself before, has never experience what it feels like to become whole after being broken. If he had to compare it, he'd say it's like coming home, except it isn't. He isn't welcoming Yuri back to Hasetsu, he's welcoming Yuri back to him.

It's no longer strange that being in Moscow felt a little odd and off. Russia isn't his home anymore:

Yuri is.

The push at his shoulders takes him by surprise, and he's blinking at Yuri's suddenly clear face (even now, he can't help but notice that Yuri looks especially determined, the way he did when he said please teach me all the jumps you know and I'm going to give it all the eros I've got! and don't ever take your eyes off me), but Yuri doesn't wait long before he's barreling forward just as aggressively, just as passionately as he just did through the door. Saying.

Please.

Saying.

Be mine.

Victor's shoulders and expression loosening, relaxing into the first real smile he's felt since he'd celebrated with Yuri in the kiss and cry what feels like centuries ago. It's tired and worn and nothing like his usual expansive excitement, but it feels like him.

And isn't that what Yuri wants him to be?

It's overwhelming in a new and completely different way: not like being crashed into by a wave, but like floating in crystal clear, warm water and slowly sinking below the surface. Looking up to find everything in front of, above him, suddenly lit through jeweled waves, as clear as it's ever been, more beautiful than words, suffused with sunlight.

It doesn't call for a hug, or a tackle, or even a kiss: it's more subdued than that, more private, more personal, more precious, more fragile. Making him reach for Yuri's hand, to lift it to his lips for a kiss. Because.

"It's almost like a marriage proposal."

Because instead of Victor chasing him, or coaxing him, or waiting for him, Yuri

is saying

stay.

He isn’t expecting, when Victor’s hand starts pulling one of his shoulder-clutched hands from his shoulder, that Victor will pull it to his mouth, and kiss his knuckles. The soft press of lips making Yuri’s heart give a surprised yelp, as his shoulders curl in a little, cheeks warming, and he’s all the more aware, for a second, of all the people around them.

Which last until those words, which blow the first few seconds further out. Yuri’s eyes going wider, cheeks getting slightly hotter, in surprise that’s almost alarm. That almost falters into a scrambling denial. The option opens itself like a trap door in front of his feet. Except. He’s still staring at Victor over it.

Victor’s soft expression, and the way he's still got the ghost of that smile holding on. Everything about his polished appearance and perfect poise seemingly wiped away by his exhaustion and the late night — and the last two days? Is that even possible? But it is, even without an answer to the unspoken question, soft. His expression. His words.

Maybe a little out of proportion.

But that’s very Victor, too, isn’t it?

That’s exactly what he wanted. To be here. To have Victor back. Everything Victor is, from the shining distant perfection of his suits during competitions to these kinds of inflated responses for very seriously put statements. Everything that is Victor, it was all he wanted for days. Yuri’s heart wobbles, too warm, and his eyes prickle a little more even, when he can’t help the just barely there smile that curves his lips.

There isn’t a trap door. There’s just Victor. Finally, finally there in front of him. With him.

He doesn’t care who’s watching, doesn't care how many of them might be offended at the moment, Yuri steps back toward Victor. His head ducking down, so his cheek can rub against Victor’s shoulder, and his eyes can close again, while his arms are finding their way back around Victor’s sides.

It's Yuri's turn to blink, but then, instead of blushing and stammering, or pulling his hands away, or poking fun at Victor for being too ridiculous, or getting annoyed because that's not what he means --

He blushes, yes. But then his expression, so full of tension and determination, relaxes into a smile that makes Victor, floating in his calm warm sea, feel like an ice cube melting all at once.

Yuri doesn't tell him he's ridiculous. Yuri doesn't correct him. Yuri doesn't say he didn't mean it like that. Yuri isn't running away at the thought of it, at the insinuation.

(He knows that's not what Yuri meant, but...

Isn't it, too?

A little?)

But then Yuri is folding back into him, and Victor's arms go back around his neck, feeling, finally, grounded. Like he can feel his feet, his legs, his arms again. Yuri willing him back into existence with this hug. And he knows that's not what Yuri meant, Yuri meant be my coach which may not be separate from everything else anymore but is still only one thing --

And Victor, suddenly, can't stand the thought of a time limit on it. Any of it. Coaching Yuri. Being with him. Beside him. It's only been two days, and it felt like a hundred years.

Words said quiet as a prayer, not lifting further than the distance from his lips to Yuri's ear.

(Lifting from his lips to God's heart.)

"I wish you'd never retire."

It’s only five words, and it’s too much.

It’s the kind of exaggeration he should expect. But it’s too much.

His eyes snap open and he takes a sharp breath in as the idea — of Victor’s words changing his, making them longer, making them never end, not on edge of a cliff where the end keeps coming so much closer, and he had to taste it already and failed, fell, doesn't want to let go now — and he can’t keep his eyes from filling with his tears suddenly, or his heart filling with the sudden treacherous snippets of the idea.

Of never losing Victor.

(Of Victor never wanting to leave him.)

Of never having to count down another day.

A tear slips down the inside of one of his eyes, dripping to catch on the plastic of his glasses. Then, another. His breath shudders in his mouth, in his chest, his lungs and his body finally shaking with this. He can’t stop his fingers from digging into Victor’s loose coat and he tries to dig his head in more, forehead against Victor’s shoulder and face hidden further down, between them. Away from the people watching, but even away from Victor maybe.

Yuri feels like he’s losing the ability to tell exactly what he’s saying, what he wants to be saying, what he shouldn’t say. Because they’re talking about their partnership and the road ahead, and where they are still going. That Yuri can't lose him as his coach yet. He can’t keep his voice from shaking and catching, now even trying to keep on track, meaning it and still half-burned by, still stumbling because of, the world Victor made exist for one second.

“Let’s win the gold together at the Grand Prix Finale.”

There's a slight pause, and then Yuri shudders a little, curling into him even more, face pressing into his shoulder, fingers clutching at his coat, and when he speaks finally, Victor's not surprised to hear the thickness of tears in his voice.

It's been a long few days, a long few weeks, a long few months, a long few years, and Yuri's fought through it all. First by himself, and then with Victor at his side, but it's been a fight nevertheless, and he's closer than ever now to his goal.

(By a hairsbreadth, but he's still there.)

So it's not unexpected, hearing Yuri restate it, what they're here for, what Victor promised him at the start of all this --

(I'll make you win the Grand Prix Final!)

-- just as it isn't unexpected that Yuri is teary. He's exhausted. (They're both exhausted.) He's been worried for so long. (About his skate, about if Victor might leave, about Maccachin.) It's no surprised he's feeling overwhelmed. "Yes."

This is his role, the thing he's been swamped by guilt for not doing for the last two days: being Yuri's support, his foundation, the solid thing he can lean on and believe in.

Believe in himself, because Victor does. "But first, let's go home."

He doesn't want to pull back even to follow his own advice, but Maccachin, finally fed up with being ignored, leaps at Yuri's hand where it's fisted in his coat, and sends Victor stumbling forward, laughing in relief.

(Perhaps with suspiciously bright eyes and thick voice, himself.)

"Maccachin, are you jealous? We haven't forgotten you."

Home sounds magical. Home nearly makes him cry harder. A drill pressing into a dissolving crack even deeper. He’s barely been gone two weeks this time, nothing like those five years, and it feels like there’d been so many more years in those days than he can’t count them. They’re etched soundless and too deep in his bones.

Even when Victor goes stumbling forward a step, two at the most toward and into Yuri, laughing, confusing Yuri about how there is anything to laugh about in the world that Victor could touch, until his words find Yuri’s ears and the name in it and he’s pulling away, trying to rub at his face, his nose with the side and the back of his hand, looking down when Victor is.

Watching the poodle scramble between jumping up and down at Victor, excited and hardly seeming like it could have waited through all of their running and hugging and words. (Like he hardly could have been on the edge of dying less than a day ago.) But Yuri remembers his shoes and legs being snuffled and head butted, right? Just barely?

“You look good,” Yuri says, voice sticking in his throat and mouth, when he’s crouching a little, eyes still wet and vision still a little blurry. He’s already getting jumped at for coming down to the proper, appropriate level. Having to catch Maccachin around the sides of his squirming body, and keep them both balanced from upending on the floor entirely, especially with the extra weight of his backpack thrown into it.

Face buried for a second in short soft fur, and only that, given the ducking and weaving head before Yuri. If there were any tears left on his cheeks, they’re gone under the tongue that attacks his cheeks with ruthless enthusiasm and has him ducking away, with something the tries to resemble a laugh. It's a little broken, but it still tries itself.

We were worried about you, sits in his head, but his throat and his chest can't say it.
The edges of his eyes prickling fiercely, so he rumples Maccachin's ears softly instead.

Good, is was the wrong word.

It’s too simple for how many people were worried.

For Mari’s voice on the phone, and his parents, and Victor — Victor, throwing himself on his old coach, and Victor flying to Japan, and Victor making it in time. And, him. Him, for the right reasons, and even the wrong ones. Even if he couldn’t really see that, too, until he heard Maccachin was fine. Until this second, when it feels even harder. The selfishness and the impossible grief, at the idea of losing Maccachin, too.

He wants to bury his face back against that fur again, even though he just swallows.
Everything feels sore and broken open, but Maccachin’s adoration is simple.
Pure. Straightforward. Unlined and undesigned. No confusion anywhere.

Yuri crouches down to Maccachin and gets his face licked clean, but not before he holds onto the wildly wagging poodle and presses his face into soft, curly fur just as Victor had, earlier. If he looked up, he might well see the heel of Victor's hand brushing beneath one eye, but though there's a damp sort of thickness to his voice and a faint gleam of moisture in his eyes, his laugh is as genuine as ever. More relieved, maybe, than happy –– he doesn't quite know what the word is for this feeling, but happy doesn't do it justice, it's more like fulfilled, or perhaps just full –– but there all the same, after two days when it felt as far out of reach as the moon or stars. "He has no idea he scared everybody."

He might have some idea. Maccachin is more perceptive than most dogs –– maybe more so than most people, even –– but the extra exuberance to his affection might simply be a function of how long Victor and Yuri have been gone. It's been weeks, and Maccachin always did love to see him after a long absence. "But he does look good."

Better than he looks. Better than Yuri looks. Of the three of them, only Maccachin now resembles the version of himself in the picture Victor had reposted to his Instagram. Yuri looks anything but carefree and joyful, and Victor still feels like death itself warmed over, but it's all fine.

He still looks perfect to Victor.

Who offers a hand to help Yuri back up, even as Maccachin leaps to lick it, a long swipe of warm wet tongue across the backs of his fingers, until he scolds: "Even if he's forgetting his manners."

It lacks heat, or firmness, or any sort of heft. Maccachin can run him over all he wants, can lick him and jump on him and shock him into a yelp by shoving a cold nose into his neck when he least expects it. Maccachin is alive, and Victor hasn't lost him yet.

Not him, and not Yuri. Be my coach until I retire.

"Let's go get your luggage."

He looks healthy and happy, and, like Victor pointed out, unaware. If Yuri hadn't lived through the last two days, if he was just another one of the people in this room, he'd never have the cause to question it. It's as relieving as it is almost disjointing. Maccachin looks ready to romp and play, and bump into peoples knees, and go rolling around on the floor or chasing after them. It's hard to connect that with Mari's voice. To the idea of him with the bun stuck in his throat, losing the ability to breathe.

But as soon as he thinks it, he's glad he didn't see it, too.
He wants to remember this part more.
The part where it did work out.

The part where he's okay.

Yuri's mouth twitches when Maccachin goes leaping for Victor's hand held out to him, and there's no real chagrin for that. He can't help the smile as Victor switches to scolding his dog with an expression and tone that sound nothing like actually put upon. The way Yuri feels absolutely nothing like put upon to push up from the ground and stand by himself.

It's hard, in the way where the word is right and the word is wrong, but so right, just to be able to see them. Watch them. Everything about it is right. The fondness and complaining from Victor, the lack of manners and the endless, bounding affection from Maccachin. It's the way it should be. Yuri's not proud of all of the last weekend, no matter that Victor's word about everyone being proud of him spent replaying in the long dark flight in the mess of everything, but he has no conflict in this. This is right.

Victor, with Maccachin. Maccachin, with Victor.

Somewhere, something shifts, just a little more. Makes it just the smallest bit easier to breathe again.

It's not the same as easy and there's no promise, in the careful breath he takes in, starting to walk beside them, he won't just burst into tears again at the next brush of the wind or if Victor hugs him again, but easier. That there is something, one thing, that's exactly how it was supposed to be, unchanged and unbroken, and not tarnished even for what happened. "Were there any special instructions for his care now?"

Yuri falls into step beside him, and it feels as right as it doesn't. There's already a nervous energy chasing itself around his system like ungrounded electricity because he's no longer touching Yuri and that means Yuri could be gone, again, at any time.

Which is ridiculous. Which is a paranoid thought based more in his inability to sleep and the strain of the last two, nearly three, days. Yuri isn't going anywhere. Yuri is coming home with him. He has no intention of letting Yuri out of his sight again for longer than a few seconds at a time. It shouldn't matter if they're touching or not.

But it does. It's real work not to reach out and sling his arm around Yuri's shoulder, and in the end he only doesn't do it because Yuri still has his heavy backpack strapped there, and Victor's arm would probably just be an annoying extra weight. "They said his throat might be a little sore for a while, so he should have soft food and plenty of water."

The last few days feel like a nightmare he's finally woken up from. It's difficult to believe that Maccachin was really in danger when he's trotting alongside them so cheerily right now, as perky and affectionate as ever. "Mostly they said to keep the steamed buns out of reach."

Maccachin doesn't often act out that way. He's curious, of course, and loves to eat, and happily tries bites of whatever Victor offers him, but it's unlike him to go nosing through food he knows he's not supposed to have.

Perhaps he had missed Victor and Yuri, too. It's been months since he's had to wait at home while Victor left for weeks at a time, and even with the Katsukis there to keep him company, maybe he decided he'd had enough with being good for the time being.

Or maybe he was just hungry. It's difficult to say. "How was the flight? Did you get any rest?"

Yuri tries not to gravitate toward Victor. What happened wasn't really appropriate.

Even if Victor has lived here long enough to know better, he gets the pass of being a foreigner. He gets the pass of being from somewhere else, where things are different. Yuri doesn't. Yuri should know better. Does know better. Tries to continue pushing that thing back down, that has no want to listen to him. Broken and sore, exhausted and needy, leaving him attempting valiantly to looking somewhere else.

Counting the signs toward baggage. Except looking away feels worse.
Looking away feels like he'll look back and there will be nothing there.

It feels like the constant building pressure of that feeling of being slammed into a wall every single time he looked up to tell something to Victor yesterday, only to realize Victor wasn't there. Again, and again, no matter how many times it happened before the newest one. He tries not to deviate his steps, tries to keep just going forward, even when his gaze keeps sliding to the side. Even just to catch the edge of that jacket in motion. Victor's arm or his hand. Shoulder. Shoes.

It works mostly. It works when Maccachin walks between them, before circling one or the other direction around them and leaving that space there again. He can feel it almost like a physical presence. Or he can feel Victor across it now. Like he if closed his eyes and he might be able to still walk blind in the gravity of Victor's voice so nearby suddenly again.

"A little," might sound about as convincing as the real answer. Which it is. Yuri can sleep like the dead when he's exhausted and even still be half asleep on his feet a little while into a normal, training, morning when up at the right time, but planes are different. Stale and stiff, sitting upright, even with his neck pillow, even trying to sleep more than half of it, isn't the same kind of sleep.

Mix in all the hours between Moscow and Fukuoka, as well as everything from yesterday.
Then it's a marvel that he managed to sleep at all, with it all combined up.

At least the rest is honest, and known. "Mostly it was just long."

"Very long."

Longer for Yuri, undoubtedly, but he's still exhausted from making the same flight only two, three days ago, his concept of time still jarred by the thousands of miles covered in too few, too long hours. "But you're back now."

Or, almost. Baggage first, and then the car, and then the drive to Hasetsu, but it won't be long. Yuri will be back home within the next hour, and maybe then Victor will stop feeling so anxious about losing him again. "Are you hungry? I'm sure you want to go straight home and have your mother's food, but we could stop somewhere if you like."

Now that he's thinking about it, he could probably use something to eat, too. The hours of exercise this morning hadn't managed to spark his appetite to much past a dull nudge, and even the ramen with Minako had seemed flavorless and unappetizing, but now he can feel it like he'd been hollowed out with a scoop.

It's something to consider as they round a corner towards the collection of luggage carousels, and he points, pleased. "Oh, look, your plane's luggage is already deloading."

It's one of the perks of these small commuter flights, but he could just about kiss the employees who made it possible for them to collect Yuri's bag and leave without having to wait too much longer.

Yuri isn’t certain when it was he got used to having Victor’s voice in the background of everything.

He remembers when it used to feel like every new word and every new sentence had him on the tips of toes, jumping at attention, heart racing, unprepared and trying to hold on to each new one, like they were being shoved into his arms and he could never hold enough of them to pay close enough attention, to stop his heart, to keep from dropping words and sentences everywhere, without even beginning to make sense of why Victor was talking to him and why Victor wanted him to respond. That was so long ago. But he remembers it perfectly clear.

He doesn’t remember when this happened.

When every word, rambled against the background of his thoughts and stumbling emotions, feels like it absolutely belongs there, whether he can find the words to respond or not. The way it feels more like air than breathing in does, and he doesn’t even feel anxious when Victor jumps between two or three different things without waiting for him to answer. He doesn’t know why it makes him want to slump, want to curl up in a ball, want to close his eyes, dig the palms of his hands into them, and just breathe in deeper, breathe out longer.

It hurts, but it hurts in the way where it doesn’t, too. Like all of his aching muscles are finally loosening. Throbbing from the tension. Throbbing from the first second of release. Part of him doesn’t even want to respond. He just wants to keep listening to Victor’s voice babbling and rolling over him in waves against the constant noise of the rest of the airport. Simultaneously, like he could somehow fall asleep to it and like he hasn’t been awake, in days, until hearing it.

He thinks about the last question in there, at least for a second or two, and maybe he feels a little ashamed for it. He knows Victor likes to go out places, even places he’s been to a dozen times, and he loves to drag Yuri out to them, even if Yuri’s been to them all but five years of his life. But more people, after a weekend of crowds and cameras, and being slapped onto a contingent of Russians he couldn’t even understand, and more than half a day on a plane, packed into such a small place, sounds excruciating. He doesn’t want more people. If he could turn around and just be home, he’d do that.

“I’m okay. I ate not too long ago on the plane,” Yuri mumbles, apologetically.

He probably ate more than he should. More than likely. Absolutely. Fretting and spiraling in the silence of having nothing but his head and his music, worried about getting here, about what Victor would say about it all, and with too many regrets attached to the day he’d just had. Convincing himself he had weeks before the next competition and he’d be back to working hard starting that day or the next at home anyway.

“That one,” Yuri points toward where his suitcase has just come through the wall opening, even if it has to snake the conveyer belt toward them still, and even though Victor knows well and fine exactly what his luggage looks like. A worn, well-used, thing that has seen him through the last six years.

He probably shouldn't feel so relieved that Yuri ate, that he won't want or need to stop on the way back to the house and the onsen and the end of this terrible day.

(But it is a relief. It feels like they're closer to home already.) "Oh, good."

He tries to imagine it doesn't sound so much more genuine than the offer to stop somewhere, if Yuri prefers, but it's a stretch. Fortunately, Yuri is already pointing, his luggage just now traveling along towards them at a sedate pace nothing like the anxiety with which Victor wants to leave, to be back already, to not have backpacks and luggage and coats and people in his way. "I'll get it."

Already making his way past Yuri and into the small group of gathering people, to cut the luggage off before it has a chance to even snake its way towards them. Maccachin opts to stay with Yuri, which is fine, because that leaves Victor with clear room to lift the luggage from the belt and set it on the floor, extending the handle to roll it along beside him. It's quick steps back to Yuri from there, and they're so close, he can feel it in his blood, like standing too near a source of electricity. "Ready to go?"

Yuri looks ready. Yuri looks beyond ready. Yuri looks like he wishes he could just will himself there and not have to deal with any of the travel in between, which Victor can appreciate.

Allowing himself to lift his free hand to the back of Yuri's shoulder, as a sort of compromise. "Let's go, Yuri."

Edited 2017-07-22 13:57 (UTC)

Yuri feels like something strains inside of him. Something he can’t entirely explain down to why it happens. Or even how. Because it should -- is -- physically impossible. But Victor slides off from him, saying he’ll get the bag, and it feels like the section of Yuri's chest right under his throat and above his backpack clip strap goes tense. His stomach crunching inward the further Victor gets away, twisting through people. Which is insane. It’s insane. Victor is right there.

Victor is in his line of sight. He never leaves it.

Victor is getting his bag.

Yuri presses his lips together harder, blinking too much, and giving a little startle when he has to look down when there’s head butt against his ankle. Honestly, sometimes, Maccachin seems almost aware of things, and Yuri says, quietly, not sure if it’s actually to himself or the poodle. “I’m fine.”

He was exhausted. That was all. That was it.

He wasn't ever good at competition weekends even on a good day.

The disastrous little head-first dash into his ribs his heart does, when he looks up from Maccachin and Victor is almost right in front of him, calls him a liar outright. He’s nodding dumbly, hoping it’s not written over the entirety of his face. Instead just saying, “Thank you.”

Which happens just about at the same second Victor’s hand finds his shoulder. Over his coat, and next to his backpack strap.

A familiar weight even through his coat and a sweater. One that has been missing for too long, even if too long is pathetically short for someone who managed years away from everyone, and he can’t help, can’t stop, that he sags a little in the direction of that touch, it almost catching his step, before he keeps going, keeps following walking Victor is leading him now.

The little lean Yuri makes into his hand makes him want to step closer, wrap his arm all the way around Yuri's shoulder, or drop his hand to find Yuri's, swinging there by his side. It would be so easy. The people around them might frown, but Victor doesn't care, can't bring himself to think it matters.

Not when it's been so long. (Two, three days. Forever.)

It's times like this he envies Maccachin's freedom of affection. Maccachin can jump all over Yuri and cover his face with kisses and request to be held and stroked and no one thinks it's strange. Maccachin's antics spark warm smiles from the same people who looked sternly them earlier, hugging for too long in front of the arrivals gate. It seems desperately unfair, and he's still not sure he cares enough about what other people think to hold back --

But Yuri does. He hasn't forgotten the horrified way Yuri looked at the articles posted the morning after his Shanghai free skate, full of insinuation that Victor had only stoked instead of minimized.

Yuri is more reserved than him. Yuri worries what people will think. Yuri remembers when things are appropriate or not.

(Just for once, Victor wishes he didn't care quite so much.)

Still, Yuri gravitates towards him, making Victor's heart take a sharp little hop towards his throat. "We should be home in plenty of time to catch the exhibition, but then you need to get some rest, Yuri. You look tired."

If it were anyone other than Victor, Yuri would say that he was fine. He can feel it, like it’s existing right there to the side of him in his own mind. He would probably even jump back, and try to deny any implication to the contrary, with his hands raised and his voice probably louder than it needed to be.

But it isn’t anyone else.

It’s just Victor, walking, talking, next to him.
Victor, hand on Yuri’s shoulder, directing him.

There isn’t a reason to do anything more, or less, than nod quietly. Something that is assent, and maybe even more than it. Maybe actually is agreement without argument. Especially when he thinks for a moment about his own bed in his own house, after a week and half in hotels, and it’s a thought that makes him feel more tired than the plane alone could even.

But it doesn’t stop him from stressing, even normal, “After.”

He still wants to see it first. He needs to. He wouldn’t change his mind about coming home, when he had, that he had — he can’t help looking to his side, to Victor at his side, just the profile of his face as he’s walking, at the thought, and Yuri’s not sure he could walk away, could have chosen to stay, even after what Yurio did, at all at this second, not even for a gold medal.

Which isn’t exactly a safe thought, or one he should be having here, is it?
Yuri picks something else, far safer. Back to what Victor said.

“Maybe I’ll sleep through all of tonight and tomorrow.”

It’s not something that’s likely to happen, being allowed to sleep in that long, through even half of a day, but it feels like it would be so easy to finally sleep. Maybe really sleep. Being back home, and Victor back in the same country, same city, same house. Maybe he could finally, actually, sleep. Between those and if he could keep himself from falling into fretting over the weekend, replaying the recordings from yesterday, to pull apart every worst step.

It wasn't so long ago they were walking like this in Shanghai, while Yuri grew tighter and tighter under his hand and Victor looked for a single place without people, where they could talk. Where Yuri finally exploded at him, in tears and fear and frustration, and he didn't know what to do.

(He still has a lot to learn about being a coach.)

Except everything has changed since that night in Shanghai, hasn't it? It's not just being Yuri's coach he needs to get right, anymore, it's this, too: how being without him for even a few days felt like barely living, like he was encased in walls of glass or ice.

It's Yuri gripping him at the arrivals gate like he never wants to let go. Yuri's shy acceptance of that date they never got to go on. It would have been tonight, wouldn't it? After the exhibition, maybe.

(If he'd been there, would Yuri have been in it?)

"You can sleep as late as you want to tomorrow."

Even without the extra stress of the last few days, he'd always advocated for a few days of rest after competitions, to keep from burning out before the next one. Four weeks isn't a lot of time, but it's enough to allow a day off before they really dig in. "We'll see how you feel in the afternoon, but I don't want you doing anything but some light exercises."

Something to keep Yuri's mind focused, while giving his body time to recover. "And a long soak in the hot spring."

The blast of cold air that greets them as they glass doors slide open and they walk through isn't as intense as Moscow's, but it's enough to make him happy that Yuri's as bundled up as he is. His own coat is still hanging open and his scarf is too loose to keep the winter air from slipping down around his throat, but it's fine. They'll be home soon enough.

Yuri made a soft noise, more like he was acknowledging the words were said, more than truly thinking deeply about them or commenting on them. Though the idea of lazing about in the hot springs for a long time, maybe even long enough to just put his head down and fade out of his own thoughts, worries, and some of the soreness sounded almost too amazing to even just think about.

He didn't expect to feel like this -- this, what?? -- once he finally got here.

This feeling where he wants to just sag to his side, against Victor, or at least by the most partial on increments until maybe his shoulder on that side could just barely brush against Victor's shoulder, or Victor's side. An even more constant and stretched feeling, even just as he took steps, from his hand and further. That Victor really was here. That he was nearby. That he wouldn't vanish in a second, any second, when Yuri looked up to say anything.

This feeling like he didn't have to say anything.

This feeling where he still had no so much to say, but it only hovered. This feeling like he wanted to say all of it, and had no clue how to feel it less say it. This feeling like he could breathe. This feeling like he didn't have to remember how to, or force himself to. This feeling like he wanted to close his eyes and just give into that exhaustion rolled over his like a fog.

This feeling like he wanted to turn his head and just stare are Victor -- real, alive, here, with him, existing, the gait of his steps, the way he held his shoulders, the soft gentle bump of his hair as he moved -- and never look away. Like maybe a decade and half, and eight months, and less than one week, had never prepared him to remember enough when Victor was suddenly gone.

Back when he first arrived all those months ago, he wouldn't know what to do with Yuri's lack of response, of anything but that small noncommittal noise, and he would have assumed he'd done or said something wrong. That's not the case now, as they walk towards the lot where he'd left Minako's car, Maccachin trotting happily at Yuri's side. His hand tightens and then lifts away, but it isn't because he's suddenly unsure of what he's doing, saying, what Yuri's thinking: it's just cold and he isn't wearing his gloves, has to slip his fingers into his coat pocket to keep them warm.

(The onsen will feel better than ever in this cold weather.)

"Minako lent me her car –– it's over this way."

No, it's been a long while since he's been befuddled by all of Yuri's silences. True, there are some he still doesn't understand –– all those long, tense moments in Shanghai, before Yuri finally snapped, and afterwards in the hotel room when Victor couldn't seem to find solid ground on whether or not what he was doing, saying, wanted was okay -– but not this kind.

Yuri is relieved to be home. He's tired, mentally, emotionally, physically. He's had a grueling week and a half, and spent the better part of the last day on a plane. He'd been dumped onto a team of Russians he barely understands, who don't like him all that much and have no reason to, aside from the fact that Victor asked them to help him.

(Yakov. He asked Yakov.

He's not going to be able to leave that conversation ignored after this.)

Given the chance, Yuri would probably fall asleep right in the car on the way home. Except that he's determined to watch the exhibition and Victor is determined to stay with him, so it'll probably be a few hours yet before he actually does rest.

(Yes, tomorrow he can sleep as long as he wants.) "She'll be happy to see you tomorrow, too."

The door opens and Victor pulls away, and there's a strange moment Yuri is caught in having to glancing up in surprise. Not expecting, but also, finding that strange dichotomy of Victor not caring when they were around the greater share of people inside and stopping as the stepped out. But it makes sense a second later, when Victor is putting his hands in his pockets, and it is still cold outside.

It's winter everywhere, already settled in. It's hard to really think about it entirely straight. In the last eight days, he's been in three countries, all of them winter cold already, and all of them with less than five hours of sun at best, with and without the clouds. Moscow had been a little colder, but even Moscow hadn't been as cold as the winter's he'd gotten used to in the last five years.

It was winter and cold everywhere, and it made sense. Why Victor let go.
But Yuri's stomach still stayed slightly sunk even as the surprise ebbed away.

His own hands tightening against the urge to -- what?
Reach out? Demand Victor's already hidden away hand?

The center of his body only seeming to catch up with his head, or where they were, in time to make him feel more adrift, more exhausted, not close enough to home still. But at least they'd be in the car soon. At least soon it would only be Victor, and maybe that would be easier, too. His suitcase and bag in the back, and the drive back. Which would be another hour of sitting after the more than a dozen behind him.

At least it made the car easy to find, and turn himself toward after spotting in the direction the three of them kept going. Stopping by the back of the car, to wait for it to be unlocked, turned over more in his head though. He'd thought about that a lot, too, in the last few days. When Victor was suddenly gone, and it stood out even starker that this was the only competition Minako Sensai had planned not to fly out for, too.

"Was she there watching with everyone?" Either way, even if she wasn't, she'd have been watching somewhere else.
She'd probably have a number of things to say the first time he got back into her studio for practice, as well.

"She watched at home, I think."

Unlocking the little car with with a beep, and hefting Yuri's luggage into the trunk. "It was pretty late here for the livestream."

The only reason he doesn't mind letting Yuri stay up to watch the exhibition is the fact that it's happening much earlier in Moscow than the final men's free skate had. "I think the triplets got in trouble for sneaking out of bed to watch, too."

Luggage in and trunk closed and he lets Maccachin into the back seat before turning to Yuri with a smile. "Come on, it's cold."

It feels even colder in the car than standing in the air outside, but he turns the engine and turns on the heat, waiting for Yuri to slip off his backpack and settle into the passenger seat. Waiting for the door to close. Waiting for the world to finally -- finally -- be shut away.

Enough for him to reach cold fingers and brush them back against Yuri's cheek, while his expression goes soft and his eyes go half-lidded. "I missed you."

In all sorts of ways. Next to him. At the rink. At the table. Saying nothing while Victor says too much. Laughing at his antics. Worrying over Maccachin with him.

Too far away, and performing on his own.

But like this, too: missing the night under the lights of the Red Square they were supposed to have. Missing the quiet breathing in the room in the middle of the night.

Missing the kiss Victor can finally lean in and give him, now that they're alone.

It keeps catching up under his step, like a surprising patch of ice. Looking up and Victor being there. Looking up and Maccachin dashing around the car, and then turning around on the seat in the car. Looking up, and being home, after what has been too few days to feel like it was a year.

Yuri can imagine he might hear about the triplets antics, but he doesn't feel a sore spot of something like guilt for them the way he does slightly for Minako Sensei. Easily obvious, they all watched for more than just him, but there was a sense of failing her, too, attached to the idea of her being up late, watching what had happened.

Better than the worst behind him…

…but not better than the day right before it.
Not better than the weekend before that.

(He only gets one more chance.
To fail. Or, to win. (Gold.)

It’s more than most
— just six —
he has to remind himself.)

His head is everywhere, when he’s getting in, having to unclip and pull off his back, and almost feeling overly bulky in his coat. Or, maybe in himself, with his unhelpful thoughts. But it all goes still, soft pressure brushes over his cheek and his eyes have to look up, surprise and familiarity everywhere, even when the touch is cold. Tumbling into something both warm and a little painful, that only flares, as it goes from Victor touching him to Victor saying those words, to Victor leaning in and kissing him.

Everything in him slipping disjointedly sideways, on another one of those patches of ice. He’s exhausted, he’s all out sorts, he doesn’t deserve, they’re still in the parking lot, his seat belt isn’t even on … and none of that make it louder than a whisper or longer than a second. Not before something else pushes up overwhelming it.

That same feeling from the waiting area, when he crashed into Victor’s chest, sounding out louder from what feels like every single part of his body. Every fear about the questions about this, this, too — about how they haven’t been apart in months, since what happened in Shanghai, that maybe everything would change, especially with his nearly falling apart, again — echoing and obliterating all at once.

When Yuri fumbles, almost tumbling, just trying figure out where to even put a hand on the everything between the two seats he isn’t even looking at, in his haste to lean up, to find Victor, the lips pressed to his. The end of all this endless space and silence. Something desperate, and needy, and undeniable everywhere, cut open, again, reaching back out from it.

Not sure he’s ever missed anything like he missed Victor. Except for Vicchan, when it was too late. Maybe … maybe not even then. Maybe not ever at all. Wasn't it not supposed to hurt once Victor was this close, once it was over?

Yuri pushes up to meet him almost instantly, hands fumbling between them, on the seat and the gearshift and the air that's suddenly crackling with electricity. Everywhere but on him, where Victor suddenly, desperately, needs them to be: fisted in his coat or tangled in his hair, curved around his neck, cupped against his cheek.

It's been so long. (It's been barely two and a half days.) He hadn't even had the chance to get used to kissing Yuri before he was gone.

Had barely gotten to where Yuri started kissing him back, like this, without hesitation or thought. Nothing but pure need, flaring and brilliant, lighting a bonfire in Victor's chest that feels like it fills the whole car, obliterates the winter chill in a flash of flame when he pushes closer, both hands going to Yuri's face. A sound that feels like the whimper his heart has been making all day drifting up, unswallowed, only muffled against Yuri's mouth, and it hurts. Aches, the way he supposes a scar would ache after a surgery, when everything has been repaired but it all still feels raw and fragile, too easily torn apart and bloodied.

Nothing is quite right yet. Not yet.

But it's beginning to get there.

He doesn't care if anyone sees, if anyone else is walking past the car on the way to theirs. He'd held back by not doing this at the gate, hadn't he? How on earth could he be expected to wait any longer?

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